In the first part of the video, someone who appears to be a security guard appears to try to break the fight up, but he doesn’t appear to render aide to the victim. Later, when the victim is assaulted again, there is not security guard in sight. One older lady appears to be trying to intervene, but in one pan-away, McDonald’s employees are seen looking on and laughing. Toward the end of the video, one of the assailants lands a severe blow to the victim’s head, and she appears to have a seizure. You can then here a man tell the assailants to run because the police are coming as the victim continues to convulse wildly on the floor.

The assault began when the victim tried to use the restroom. Maryland has seen a significant rise in anti-trans rhetoric in the recently failed attempt to pass an anti-discrimination bill in the state legislature. Opponents of the measure stoked bigotry over the bill by warning of “men” in women’s restrooms and referring to it as “the bathroom bill.”

The victim, whose name is not yet available, was identified as transgender by the man who video’ed the event and posted about it on his Facebook page.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the attack occurred on April 18. Two women were arrested. A 14-year-old girl has been charged as a juvenile, and charges are pending against an 18-year-old woman. The victim, whose identity has not yet been released, is reported to be in fair condition at Franklin Square Hospital Center.

“We are shocked by the video from a Baltimore franchised restaurant showing an assault. This incident is unacceptable, disturbing and troubling,” the company said in a statement posted on its website. “Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and employees in our restaurants. We are working with the franchisee and the local authorities to investigate this matter.”

What are the laws in Maryland regarding not helping a victim of a violent crime? I’d like to see every worthless waste of oxygen that stood by and laughed arrested and charged as some sort of accessory to the assault. This beating could have been deadly.

The worst part is if one of those soulless douche bags behind the counter had even stood in the way I’m sure the attack would have stopped.

The unfortunate thing is that not one of those employees will be reprimanded aside from perhaps the one who filmed it, because the policy of employers in this situation is to avoid liability. I hope that the victim sues the store and both assailants are found guilty and locked away for as long as possible. That was just plain sadistic.

I think the manager did the best he could in this horrible situation. If he touched one of those girls (the attackers) he’d be putting his life and career at risk. In most places in the U.S. just one claim from a girl saying “he touched me where he shouldn’t have” will get a man arrested and going through a whole legal rigamarole. That’s why most men now know better than to break up a fight between females.

Laughing? That is not doing the best any of those people (except the old woman) could have done.
Yes, because of political correctness, there are enormous risks to intervening in the US. This, however, was a situation in which one must take action, never mind stupid American laws.

Would a pack of dogs have stood by and permitted this? Would a family cat have done nothing?

These people don’t even rise to the level of family pets.

Disgusting.

I hope McDonalds uses their resources to pay for the treatment of the physical and emotional harm this poor woman suffered. I hope the DA has the morals to prosecute everyone involved to the max.

Laughing?

We desperately need legal protection for all members of our non-cis gendered, non-heterosexual, and intersexed world.

I disagree. I wouldn’t have touched one of those girls. I’ve intervened (on the NY subway) to help a woman (and her kid) who were being attacked once, but that was by a man. I’m not going to jail because some girl says I “touched” her because feminist activists have made that the rule in the U.S. (I do agree that the old lady was awesome).

On a certain level, morally, I agree with you. But I’m not going to judge those men who choose not to risk their whole lives for that. I was on a bus last summer which was packed with people and it was very hot and a girl passed out, practically landed on top of me, then hit the floor. She turned out to be okay (it was just the heat) but while she was on the floor I immediately went forward to help her before I realized “no way!”. Not one other guy on the bus would touch her either. You don’t dare, these days. What if she’s some nut who says, “He touched my breast!” My life is too important to spend a week in jail waiting for an attorney, then have feminists marching with signs outside my business, and then looking forward to the trial. I understand your point, but…..when it comes right down to it… So I understand the manager. I agree that the guy filming and laughing is beyond contempt. (Yet, ironically, that film will be useful as evidence later on).

MKYLL, you seem to misunderstand what a feminist is. They’re people, men and women, who believe that men and women should be treated equally. Also there needs to be evidence that a crime was committed. On a crowded bus there would be many witnesses that you did not in fact grope her.

The fact is girls in high school hallways and women in work places are frequently groped, fondled, etc and it’s very rare that anything is done about it that actually has a lasting effect. That’s kind of why it’s so common.

You fear is completely irrational.

The worst part is any one of those men could have stopped those girls.

The ironic part is it wasn’t more than a few decades ago that those two girls could have expected the same treatment from white women if they tried to use the same drinking fountain.

No way, Malcolm, it’s not irrational. Not for me or any other guy on that bus. Just the claim alone will get you arrested without question. Even if a hundred witnesses saw the opposite. That’s the law in virtually every state. Go read blogs like Shakesville and Pandagon and you’ll see they’re all for that too. Granted, I wouldn’t be convicted at trial, but who wants to go through all the legal hassle beforehand. (That said, I do realize there are reasonable feminists who just want equality and I’m certainly supportive of them).

I also have a brother who teaches high school in a pretty rough neighborhood. Fistfights are not unknown between girls, and he’s told me he’d never touch them to break it up. And that other male teachers know this. He told me this without even knowing my own feelings on the matter. So cut the McDonald’s manager some slack.

I cut none of them any slack except the old woman who risked her life.

David Malcolm, while I heartily agree with your sentiments, addressing MKYLL with your – in every sense absolutely correct – comment completely overlooks the horrible truth of how badly political correctness and the zero-tolerance sexual crime laws have been perverted (well, not sure about PC – best I can tell, it’s goal from the beginning was to destroy abled cis-gendered white heterosexual men).

A friend of mine in the West didn’t respond to his company’s blood drive. When the Christian ‘lady’ in his office asked why not, he said he didn’t care to donate. He lives in a state where gays are not only forbidden to donate, it is punishable, by the way.
So Ms. Christian Lady goes to HR, denounces him as a homosexual deviant. HR says, “no, company policy is we don’t discriminate against gays.”
OK; then – without pause, she says he sexually harassed her.
He was summarily fired, bankrupted, lost his home, put on the sexual offender list, it took two solid years of fighting before a court finally was willing to view the video tapes (thank goodness for cameras, for a change) and see and hear that she’d made it up out of spite.
The stress killed him.

So, David, please – don’t dismiss non-PC sentiments. There are consequences to interceding, absolutely. I still think one must intercede, but I don’t for a moment believe the hero will get the key to the city. More likely, his life will be ruined.

I find it extremely hard to believe, enough already, that your brother was PUT ON A SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY for sexual harassment.

The truth is that both your and MKYLL’s claims are hyperbolic, offered without proof, and, at their core, pretty misogynistic. The general line of thought reads “I can’t/won’t do anything to breakup fights involving women because they’re all crazy b*tches just waiting to ruin a man’s life with a false claim revolving around sex. –Oh, but not ALL women are like that. Just a big enough majority that I won’t take the chance.”

If we unpackage this a little we can see that, besides the fact that women in our society are often conditioned to be ashamed and secretive about being the victim of any kind of sexual attack (physical or verbal) because of attitudes like these from men like you, the claim is always sexually-based because in this type of thinking women in general are equated with anxiety about the potential power of (female) sexuality. Talk like this is all about keeping women “in their place” so that they DON’T speak up when someone actually does sexually assault them.

To return to the original point of the whole article, it’s morally reprehensible that no one, including the male manager, stepped in to offer aid. Saving another person’s life is always more important than keeping your job security.

Meredith,
Screamed:
I find it extremely hard to believe, enough already, that your brother was PUT ON A SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY for sexual harassment.
endquote

Since my twin brother has never had so much as a speeding ticket, so do I.

This was a friend of mine in the US, and I won’t dishonor his death by arguing with you.

Setting aside the rest of your abusiveness (do you write agit-prop for a Christian church? That’s about the level of your screed), I am relieved to note that we both agree on one thing – and, look, you didn’t even scream it:
Meredith wrote:
To return to the original point of the whole article, itâ€™s morally reprehensible that no one, including the male manager, stepped in to offer aid. Saving another personâ€™s life is always more important than keeping your job security.
And on that note I think I’ll depart from this thread. I’m not going to see the suffering of this poor woman misused to advance your agenda.

I used to feel pretty safe in public as a transwoman, now I’m scared. This is why hate crimes laws are needed, there are two victims, the immediate victim and the larger community who is robbed of their peace of mind.

And Mkyll’s attitude disgusts me. Its the equivalent of “I won’t cross the street because I might get hit by a bus”. If you want to be a coward, go ahead, but for you to try to convince others not to defend the innocent is beyond the pale. If I was a man and I was there you can bet I’d have intervened and “She might say I sexually assaulted her” be damned.

Priya Lynn, if you had been there and even if you were 5′ nothing on tiptoes and 97 pounds soaking wet, you would have waded in to help.
We may disagree on some things, but I know courage when I see it.

This attack was awful. The video will be very useful in terms of prosecuting the attackers. Hopefully, they spend a long time in jail.

I don’t think the victim had a seizure though. The actual motor movements during the event aren’t consistent with a neurologic seizure. She may have wisely faked a seizure to stop the attack, or she may have had a pseudoseizure (when someone has seizure like activity from being emotionally overwhelmed).

Ok, we get it MK, you’d stand by and watch someone get beaten almost to death to save yourself from a misdemeanor. Gotcha. Oh, and somehow this turned into feminist bashing hour. That always raises a red flag for me.

Bryan Fischer of the AFA tweeted that the Mcdonalds beating victim was a man who thinks he’s a woman trying to use the restroom, and that they were right when they called it the “bathroom bill.” Wow, would an awesome, Christian thing to say.

I’ve only been in one physical altercation in my life. It took six people to pull me off of the guy. He had been bullying me for quite a while. My childhood batterer was a woman. I had learned to suffer in silence. I survived to a size where I could disarm her but never turned her weapons on her. She didn’t hit me again but the abuse didn’t stop, it just changed forms. I was always taught that boys don’t hit girls.

I did come pretty close to filing assault charges against one of our technical directors just for punching me on the arm although in her case I think it was affection, not misandry.

Erin : A misdemeanor ? You better go back and read over the posts. To any male, gay or straight, out there : With any altercation between men feel free to jump in. With any altercation between women, stay far back and just call the police.

Mk, that is ridiculous. This woman could have been killed. All it took was one single punch to kill a sophomore on my college campus when he got mugged in the parking lot. This woman took repeated blows to the side of the head. The women were arrested as the criminals they are. No law enforcement/judge/jury in their right mind would charge you with a felony for trying to protect a beating victim. This paranoia of a hypothetical sex crime charge does not fit this situation, and it seems to me you took no time in using it to go after “feminists.”

I notice that the Huffington Post finally has this up – in their food section, currently.
The comment section is filled with people trying very hard to actually communicate with each other.
There have been some very serious attempts to explain the difference between “cross-dressing” and being “transgender”. There have been some apologies and clear statements of, “oh, I thought we had a good samaritan law! We don’t!???”

And, yes, there have been some of the usual nasty people making the usual nasty comments.

MYKLL certainly represents a viewpoint which is not mine – but to tear him to pieces this way is to ignore several real and valid concerns.

I got my own share of loving commentary for noting that men are more easily vulnerable to misuse of zero-tolerance and political correctness with some of the stupidest commentary I’ve read in years. I’m “afraid” of female sexuality?

First – we all want safety for our transgender and intersexed brothers and sixters.
Second – we deperately need legal protections for them.
Third – guess what – there isn’t even a legal requirement in Maryland to call 911 or to intervene when someone is under attack with deadly force.
Nor is there a good-Samaritan law.

Currently, this woman might actually be subject to prosecution for using the “wrong” bathroom.
Currently, any man who so much as touches a woman, especially a minor is required to prove his innocence should she decide to lie – and does anyone think that that 14 year old spawn of Satan wouldn’t do such a thing?
Currently, anyone trying to help that poor woman is fully liable (in Maryland) for any personal or property damage resulting from it – and can be cited for disturbing the peace for their efforts.
Currently, it is well possible that all those folks standing around might well have been within their rights – assuming, they didn’t place bets with federal monies backing them. That would have been a crime.

Now, let’s see. We can indulge in tearing each other to pieces – the reason I let off posting last night was to prevent such a fight – or we can focus on what’s important.

First – is there an place to donate money to help this poor woman? I haven’t seen any yet.
Second – how can we leverage this attack to gain 911, good Samaritan laws?
Third – how can we leverage this hatred to push through laws protecting all people, not just cis-gendered heterosexuals?
Fourth – what sort of society have we become that such attacks are commonplace?

That would be much more effective use of our time than the knee-jerk “feminist” political correctness attacks. There’s a real victim here, a woman who has suffered true misogyny.

I don’t care what the laws are in Maryland. A selfish coward stands by and watches while someone gets brutally beaten to save themselves from maybe, perhaps getting charged for something. I’m still not impressed with the attacks on feminists and pc. Some people can’t wait to find an excuse to attack feminists and claim all they do is attack men and ruin their lives. The whole sex charge thing is a stretch at best, and this is a poor excuse to complain about things like feminism and political correctness. There is nothing wrong with either. Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with using language that offers groups and individuals respect and dignity. There’s nothing wrong with lending women full and equal citizenship. That’s what those things are about, not creating problems or reasons to complain, and not attacking men and ruining their lives, and I’m sick of hearing about it. How about lamenting that this horrible thing happened to this woman and expressing regret that no one helped? That is the decent, non douchey thing to say. Not trailing off into how feminists can’t wait to lock men away for faulty sex abuse charges. How ridiculous.

I totally agree with you that the people there should have stepped in to help that poor young woman. It is a disgrace that the only person to do anything was an old woman.

Said that several times here, but, heh – why see a point of agreement when you can roundhouse insult and alienate and be generally nasty?

This knee-jerk attack mode by many “feminists” in our community is not productive.

Look – once we have full human status and our civil rights restored, you separatists can just go live out your lives away from us horrid men. But until then, you are only hurting your feminist selves with all these attacks.

I don’t agree with MKYLL at all (and said so repeatedly, but – heh, who cares about little things like facts) but I have to hand it to you – you’re doing exactly the same sort of thing he does.

This is why good people need to carry guns. As for people saying that the manger did his best. He did nothing. He could have punched the girls out. he could have took the victim in the back office,and call 911. He is just as sick as the rest of them,and he should be fired,and have charges filed on him.

they should do a good long time 10 to 15.They are scum,they are vile trash.Not one person there did any thing to help. One of thos men could have easily knocked the monsters out.Oh wait i forgot because of are fucked up society a man can never hit a girl. Even if they are a vile disgusting monster.

enough already, you claim that we should get along and have real dialogue here, but your tone in many of your comments is extremely sarcastic (most notably the “heh–” interjections in your most recent comment). Also, you engage in classic derailing to avoid having an actual discourse about the sexist assumptions underlying yours and MKYLL’s comments about women lying about sexual harassment (notice that my exact quote–which you yourself suggest people refer to in relation to your comments–was “in this type of thinking women in general are equated with anxiety about the potential power of (female) sexuality,” yet you twisted it in a subsequent comment to imply that I had said you personally were “afraid” (not my wording) of female sexuality and this was irrelevant because you’re gay (even though it’s not really irrelevant because it’s perfectly possible to be gay and sexist, racist, or any other thing).

Main point: check your male privilege at the door, stop coddling MKYLL’s feminist-bashing attitudes, and practice what you preach about dialogue in the comments section.

Also, sorry about the brother mix-up; MKYLL had posted something about HIS brother, and the two comments must have just gotten confused in my mind.

Meredith,
That’s a fair mistake about brothers, to be honest, were mine to have been less of a goody-goody two shoes in our youth he might be a bit more flexible today.

This level of hatred and horror is way beyond anything we normally talk about here.

There is a difference between your statement â€œin this type of thinking women in general are equated with anxiety about the potential power of (female) sexuality,â€ and how I interpreted it, for that I apologise.

And, yes, one need only glance at some of the comments elsewhere – even over at JMG – to see that the fabulous gene does not protect us against racism.

Male privilege? OK, sure – but, if you want to argue that it biases my thinking then I think it only fair that you accept that there are some aspects, especially in the US of male-female interaction which do not play on an entirely level field in the opposite direction.

Let me repeat here, again – many people prefer the shoot first, read the previous comments never approach – that I absolutely am appalled that only one old woman interceded, that everyone standing around deserves a thoroughly embarrassing and very highly public accounting, MKYLL is wrong, wrong, wrong and, regardless of the consequences, the men should have jumped in to rescue this young woman.

OK, that said – it is not at all productive to ignore facts. One of them, especially in the US, is zero tolerance. Another is the way sexual harassment laws are applied.

I argue and I still argue that those men should have done the only right thing and defended that woman. Let’s be honest here, though – the US laws make doing so for a man costly.

Yes, I am often quite sarcastic when people make unflattering comments towards me. It is a nice counter-balance to the political correctness police and double-plus enforced assumptions about how gay men are somehow the one group in our queer community who really shouldn’t be permitted an equal voice.

I’ve said it a million times, and will say it again… THIS is what is wrong with America. We are all human beings, and even though we may not accept other people and their lifestyles, NO ONE has the right to fight or hit another person. EVER. I hope these girls get the maximum sentence..but karma is a bitch, these girls will get it back in one way or another.

this is a sick beating but that was not a real seizure! i am not in the medical field and i noticed that. i did however show it to my wife who is a heart recovery specialist and she agreed with me. that was only an atempt to get the girls off of him…
and as for it actually being a he STAY THE F*CK OUT OF THE GIRLS BATHROOM YOU SICK F*CK! YOU ARE A MALE AND NOTHING WILL CHANGE THAT!!!

So as long as we’re talking about sexism, I’ve noticed a real sexist trend in these comments, and that is the assumption that any guy has the ability to just walk up to a woman and punch her out. Or even end up winning in a fistfight.

I’m a guy. And I say with not a hint of shame: MOST WOMEN COULD BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF ME. I’m not a violent person, I barely know how to make a fist, and if someone came at me, I’m 99% sure I’d ball up to protect myself.

So, hey – let’s drop the sexist stereotypes? Because the fact of the matter is that the real focus should be on the victim, not on enraging on each other over complete non-sequiturs.

Chris, you’re heartless and evil. Transwomen have a right to use the women’s bathroom. If she tried to use the men’s bathroom its even more likely that some sick person like you would assault, or kill her and then claim it was justified.

DN, I don’t think anyone was assuming every male is up to a fist fight. The men here opposing intervention weren’t opposing it because they felt physically incapable, they were opposing intervention because they claim there is a risk of being charged with a sex crime for intervening.

Chris has proposed that this person “STAY THE F*CK OUT OF THE GIRLS BATHROOM.”

This is actually a telling comment and provides us with a good illustration of the attitudes of those who oppose gay or trans rights.

Chris doesn’t want her to use the women’s bathroom. But, as Priya Lynn noted, we can be certain that Chris doesn’t want her in the men’s room either. If you look at what Chris is really saying, it comes down to this: “Be invisible”.

Now Chris probably doesn’t support killing gay or trans people. Nor would he likely say that we really have to right to actually exist. We can do what we like “in their own bedrooms” or “in that gay part of town” or somewhere else where no one has to see us.

Priya Lynn,
ONE man, ONE man only is arguing for not interceding here.
Without exception, I have argued FOR interceding to protect the victim.

There is a difference between the two positions. You are being unfair.

MYKLL is saying he won’t help a woman because the risk is too high of being thrown to the wolves of political correctness and out of control anti-male hysteria.

I am saying one MUST help the victim, regardless of the fact that, yes, in the US of 2011, a man is indeed put at risk of injustice through a system which has elevated zero tolerance above common sense.

By casting us both together, you are only adding strength to his position.

You either stand for something or you don’t. That old woman had courage. The rest of those people did not.

You don’t fail to intercede just because there might be penalties for doing so. You intercede because a fellow human is being beaten.

Where MYKLL has raised a valid topic of discussion, is the manner in which the US legal system approaches patently absurd statements made against men. Between political correctness and zero tolerance, by the time a man has cleared his name, his life can be ruined beyond repair.

That’s a totally different discussion. One we all need to have. It does not change the fact that the only person to help this young woman was an old woman with brittle bones.

the cameraman was fired? from McDonalds?! Oh My GAWD!!!! his life must be ruined! He was fired from McDonalds. Well there goes his career in French Fry management. How will he ever get another job? Let me know when the criminal charges for aiding & abetting come in.

You are concluding based on a newspaper article & a Youtube video. Most likely what happened is that the transexual harassed the 2 teenage girls as they were using the bathroom such as ask for sex before the 2 girls committed street justice. The transexual committed the crimes indecency & harassment & the girls bashed the transexual.

Most â€˜gay bashingsâ€™ happen because men react to crimes that the homosexual did-after a homosexual has harassed or pinched another manâ€™s butt or groin against his will after which the man reacts by bashing or killing the homosexual. Since this is about 2 teenage girls beating up a transexual, the transexual most likely committed a crime & got bashed. Finally, they must abolish sex changes-cure GID, donâ€™t maim the patients.

Enough Already, I learn about gay bashings just by talking to gay bashers. They have told me that they bashed the homosexual after the homosexual 1st committed a crime such as harass or pinch their butt or groin against their will which caused the men to violently react. If a man pinches a woman’s butt or boobs against her will, the man is committing a crime-anywhere from battery to sex abuse. In 2007, Tucker Carlson talked about how he bashed a homosexual when he was in high school after the homosexual was harassing him in a mall restroom. As I see it, the homosexual committed a crime & Tucker Carlson reacted.

With this case, the 2 girls bashed the transexual similar to what Tucker Carlson faced. The bathroom is the place to wash up & use the toilet. They’re not the place for sex. This transexual was harassing a teenage girl for sex & the girl with her 18 year old friend bashed the transexual. That’s how I see it.

You’ll criticize me for this but if a man says that he bashed a homosexual after the homosexual harassed or abused him, then unless I see contrary proof, I believe the man’s story. Most violence against homosexuals is men reacting or over to abuse which homosexuals 1st commit. With this case, I believe the transexual harassed the teenage girl & the girls reacted to this.

Jacques, its well known that gay bashers often make up stories about being harrassed to justify their attacks.

I realize hate and a desire to excuse the attack are the reasons you claim the transgender woman sexually propositioned her attackers and that you are not open to reason but that idea is absurd. As a transwoman myself when I use the bathroom I don’t even look at the other women there, I go about my business quickly and get out of there. The last thing any transwoman wants is to attract attention to herself in the bathroom, there’s no way she propositioned those animals.

People like you will make up any excuse to justify assaults on LGBTs, your black, black heart is obvious to all.

I realize hate and a desire to excuse the attack are the reasons you claim the transgender woman sexually propositioned her attackers and that you are not open to reason but that idea is absurd.

Agreed.

However, just for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the transwoman did ask the two girls for sex.

Can any moral personal seriously suggest that beating her violently is an appropriate response? Is that level of violence ever a legitimate response to a non-coercive sexual advance?

Because before someone seriously thinks about promoting such a notion, they might want to think of all the bars that could suddenly become littered with the broken, bleeding, and even dead bodies of heterosexual men.

Should every pervert be allowed to dress as a woman and enter a rest room when your children are in there? I am not implying that the victim in the video is a pervert, I am pointing to the nonsense which can happen when rules of society are erroded.

If a man dressed as a woman followed my children into the rest room, I would follow very quickly and HE would be ejected even more quickly.

As for the staff watching this horrendous attack, who knows the background? If they intervened the savages boyfriends may have retaliated, drive-by shooting style.

What is worse is the lack of empathy for the MALE victim. “She be havin seizures”. Those retards even filmed their cowardice and lack of empathy.

The liberals here are commenting on the haters who are intollerant towards “Transgenders”. Look at what the attackers have done with all the “tollerance”.

Violence in the black community is a harsh reality and all the affirmative action in the world will not uplift some people.

Compare the events following hurricane Katrina and those following the earthquake in Japan. I’m not “hatin” anyone by the way, I pointing to the stark reality of a broken Liberal society which can’t even recognise male from female. Is it any wonder people can’t associate their actions to that of a decent human, when even a clear cut issue such as gender is confusing some?

Is it any wonder that people can’t act like human beings under such circumstances? Is it any wonder that FEMA camps are required?

The whole display on that video and all involved make me despair for mankind. We’re going backwards.

Fraz said “If a man dressed as a woman followed my children into the rest room, I would follow very quickly and HE would be ejected even more quickly…Iâ€™m not â€œhatinâ€ anyone by the way”.

Transwomen have been using the ladies bathroom for decades without incident. Your assumption that they are predators and determination to attack them is extreme hatred pure and simple. You’re a despicable person Fraz.

Fraz said “I pointing to the stark reality of a broken Liberal society which canâ€™t even recognise male from female. Is it any wonder people canâ€™t associate their actions to that of a decent human, when even a clear cut issue such as gender is confusing some?”.

To suggest that the existence of transpeople causes others to not know right from wrong is preposterous, blaming the victim, and yet another concrete example of the raging hatred that blinds you to common decency and morality.

Fraz, it’s clear that you have a very strong connection with your sense of conventional gender and sex.

Gender isn’t as cohesive as you would like it to be. What bathroom would you like a person with ambiguous or dual or undetermined genitals to use? Intersex people require bathrooms too.

You provide a very predatory explanation for transgender behaviour – well, we would all agree with you that predators require intervention but this is not the case in the McDonald’s situation.

You just need to take a quite moment to sit and listen to yourself. Perhaps when you see gender enacted differently you feel fear, or anger, or confusion. Gender is often the answer to a question, but when gender is called into question it may leave one feeling unsafe and unsure.

I’m glad that you talk about empathy because it shows you really do have the tools with which to begin to access the way this victim sees the world. She doesn’t deny that her genitals exist – gender is how someone participates in the world. The world she is in is hostile – what can we do to reduce that hostility?

Meh, I hate that people just stood by too but I do not believe that they should be charged with accessory to assault. IMO, the girls wouldve done it without people sniggering in the background anyways. and not doing anything is a stretch to charge as an accessory too… Id only charge someone with accessory if they really actually helped with the crime. No stretches, or farfetched charges >.> . its just bologna sandwich to me.

I think WorldStarHipHop should stop posting these videos as it advocates violence. But one could argue that they bring problems to the forefront. What we do know is that they benefit from it financially and that isn’t right.

In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.